


One's Prize, Another's Price

by Katharos



Category: Hikaru no Go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 14:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katharos/pseuds/Katharos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A small AU. Can something be lost that was never gained?</p>
            </blockquote>





	One's Prize, Another's Price

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the first round of blind_go.

  
It was in the winter of his last year of middle school that Touya Akira first recognised his creeping discontent.

He turned the feeling over in his mind carefully, as he knelt before his goban in his room. There was a game half laid out on it, his hand poised in the air holding a black go stone. He had played it yesterday. His opponent had been only a few years older than him, a pro of a few more years than Akira.

Akira dropped his gaze to the goban, tracing the pattern of white and black on the slighltyl battered surface. He had made a mistake here. Simple, stupid. It could have cost him the game.

The other player hadn't noticed.

He set the go stone down with a simple click.

His opponents stood ahead of him, walking their own roads. Kuwabara-sensei, Ogata-san, his Father. He didn't need to chase them. He could simply walk, gathering experience around him like dust until their paths intersected and they faced each other across a Goban.

Go filled him, as necessary as breathing – and needing as little passion. You don't want to breath, Akira mused staring down at the goban and the game laid out there. You simply need to. The only time when you fight to breath, when you burn to, is when you're drowning.

Akira wasn't drowning, but he needed to fight nonetheless.

 

His father regarded him, serene and unmovable across the table when Akira mentioned at dinner that he intended to carry on to high school.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Yes," Akira said, and his Father nodded and it was settled, his eyes already going slightly distant, as if looking beyond to something no one else could see. Chasing a wraith across the internet. A wraith the rest of the Go world was equally obsessed with. But they would all step aside for a chance to witness another game between Touya Meijin and Sai.

His Father who dressed in yukata and was accounted traditionalist even among go players now carried a laptop with him where ever he went, always charged, always turned on, only separate from it when engaged in a tournament game.

School work helped a little. His nature demanded that he give his best to everything he put his mind to, yet he couldn't help but feel that even the most challenging of assignments were as nothing compared to the complexities offered by go. Or what go could offer.

Akira was glad for his father who had finally discovered one who could match him, challenge him, force him to grow and rise to even greater heights, and who could rise with him. He truly was glad.

And yet he was learning that envy had a bitter taste.


End file.
